Environmentalists and animal rights activists are in rare opposition, because birds are being cooked alive when they fly through the concentrated rays of the world's largest solar thermal power plant, Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California.

Solar thermal plants are excellent means of creating renewable energy and jobs. They help reduce US reliance on foreign oil. But the reputation of solar energy as a whole could suffer unjustly from the charred feathers showing up at giant solar thermal plants.

BrightSource's Ivanpah Energy Plant is a massive solar thermal plant that covers 3,500 acres with 173,500 heliostats, each of which contains 163 square feet of mirrors. These thousands of giant mirrors direct sunrays to one of three 459-foot power towers. The heated towers then create steam, which generates energy-producing turbines.

In other words, that thing you did as a kid with the ants and the magnifying glass – Ivanpah develops that technology to power 140,000 homes with clean energy.

Youtube screenshot of Ivanpah

Ivanpah also creates three massive teepees of doom that fry the life out of any hapless wildlife wandering through the wrong path. The concentrated sunrays directed at the towers are hot enough to set birds afire the instant they cross the blaze barrier. Birds and especially insects can be attracted to light, so the glittering towers act like colossal bug zappers.

According to reports from TheAssociated Press, estimated yearly bird deaths "range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group." Estimates are always subject to bias, so only time will tell how truly deadly such a gigantic solar thermal design can be.

The $2.2 billion Ivanpah launched in February, but BrightSource plans to complete an even larger project in 2016 with Palen, a 3,800-acre solar thermal plant of similar design.

Because Palen would sit between the Colorado River and the Salton Sea, it could disrupt a major commuting zone for birds. Thus, bickering is ensuing among animal rights activists and renewable energy proponents, two groups unaccustomed to opposing one another. If Palen is built, the reputation of unrelated solar energy sources may suffer from the dead-bird debacles of giant solar thermal plants, which would be a losing situation for everyone.

A solar energy expert wishing to remain anonymous told Esquire, "Frankly, I don't like these giant solar thermal plants simply because stuff like this happens with birds, and misinformed people use it to discredit everything solar with one lump of ignorance. They'll claim, 'My kids will go blind,' or some other garbage under the rationale, "Just look what solar done to them birds."

That frustration is understandable. Unless somebody hooks them up to an electric weed-eater that runs amok, photovoltaic systems—you know them as PV systems or solar panels, like the ones pictured below— are harmless. Even regular-sized solar thermal plants, which tend to be a small fraction the size of BrightSource's behemoth California projects, pose a much smaller threat to birds.

Giant solar thermal plants may harm flying animals that swoop into their rays, but such damage is minor in comparison to the environmental, economical, political, and even health problems caused by widespread reliance on big oil. Ivanpah generates 392 megawatts of energy while emitting 400,000 metric tons less carbon dioxide than fossil fuels would produce. As Presidents Obama and Clinton said, Ivanpah is a great way to protect our planet while reducing reliance on foreign oil.

But now dead birds are happening.

If only to avoid the public relations nightmare that dead birds beckon, the renewable energy world may be better off sticking to solar panels and downscaled solar thermal plants in the future. In a world where renewable energy strives for support, good PR is worth considering.

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